It's easy to rail on the Bush administration because it gives us so many opportunities, but one of the more egregious--and under-reported--ways it abuses people has to do with the way that legal residents who are accused of terrorist acts are treated.

The Bush Justice Department doesn't have a stellar record on convictions, as anyone who's been following these stories can tell you. Locally, the Liberty City Seven trial is a perfect example. They're the sad sacks who, the government claimed, wanted to wreak all manner of havoc, including blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago. It was a classic case of overreach and entrapment--the person doing the "investigating" turned out to be more of a ringleader than anything else, and a jury found one of the defendants not guilty while hanging on the other six.

Well, that person who was found not guilty is named Lyglenson Lemorin, and he's still in jail, facing deportation. He's a legal resident--he's been here twenty years, since he was a teenager, if my math is correct--and immigration officials want him deported. Now remember, this isn't a case where the jury failed to return a verdict, which would be bad enough. Lemorin was acquitted--the jury took positive action to say "this man did nothing in violation of the law"--and yet immigration officials are looking to punish him, a punishment which would separate him from his wife and three children.

It's one thing to deport a person who is here illegally, or a legal resident who has been convicted of a crime, but to deport a person who has done nothing wrong is shameful. It smacks of an abuse of power and an attempt to cover up ineptitude by the Justice Department.